Daily Top Ten – November 28, 2016

1. Entering Strong Seasonal Month with Under Allocation to Equities by Most Investors.

2. 18 Months of Consistent Flows Out of Equities into Bonds.

Over the past 18 months, investors’ money has been flowing consistently out of equity funds. On a net basis, about $130b has left domestic equity mutual funds and ETFs. You can track that data every week here (chart below uses data from ICI).

The most recent data on fund managers’ investment allocations agrees with the fund flow data. Last month, allocations to equities relative to bonds, commodities and cash were near the lows formed in mid-2010, 2011 and 2012. Equities moved higher and bonds moved lower (yields moved higher) at those junctures. Read more on this here (data from BAML).

3. Foreigners have been Net Sellers of U.S. Stocks for 4 Years.

Foreigners have been net sellers of U.S. stocks. Chart 3 plots the S&P 500 Index with the 12-month rolling total of foreign purchases of U.S. equities. They peaked in April 2013, and went negative in November that year. In the past, the green bars and the red line have tended to follow each other. This has not been so the past couple of years. Other sources have stepped in.

Buybacks Picked up the Slack…Back to 2007 Highs.

4. Russell 2000 Small Cap Growth About to Make All-Time High….This Chart goes back to 2012, after Jan.2016 pullback, you had no gains for 3 years.

5. Only 4% of Energy Equities were Trading Above 200day to start 2016….History?

Early this year, less than 4% of all Energy Sector equities were trading above their 200-day moving average (chart below). Going back to the mid-1980s, this has only happened three other times: 1987, 1998/99, and 2008/09. This historic breadth washout is another sign that Energy’s secular low is in the rearview.

India only has 1.6% of Citizens who Paid Income Tax….40% of Large Rupee Bills have already been collected under Modi Plan.

In a nation where 98 percent of consumer payments are still made in cash and about a quarter of the $2 trillion economy is unaccounted for, Modi’s pushing for electronic transactions to improve transparency. The latest move is estimated to more than double annual growth at payment companies.

8. Read of Day…Clinton Carried 2/3 of the Economy.

Donald Trump lost most of the American economy in this election

In the modern era of presidential politics, no candidate has ever won the popular vote by more than Hillary Clinton did this year, yet still managed to lose the electoral college. In that sense, 2016 was a historic split: Donald Trump won the presidency by as much as 74 electoral votes (depending on how Michigan ends up) while losing the nationwide vote to Clinton by 1.7 million votes and counting.

But there’s another divide exposed by the election, which researchers at the Brookings Institution recently discovered as they sifted the election returns. It has no bearing on the election outcome, but it tells us something important about the state of the country and its politics moving forward.

The divide is economic, and it is massive. According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America’s economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country’s economic activity last year.

Clinton, in other words, carried nearly two-thirds of the American economy.

Here’s how the researchers, at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, visualized that. You can see immediately what’s going on: With the exceptions of the Phoenix and Fort Worth areas, and a big chunk of Long Island, Clinton won every large-sized economic county in the country.

9. Where is Gen Y Moving?

10. 10 daily habits that are sabotaging your productivity and success

Breaking bad habits requires self-control — and lots of it. Research indicates that it’s worth the effort, as self-control has huge implications for success.“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” — Warren Buffett

University of Pennsylvania psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman conducted a study where they measured college students’ IQ scores and levels of self-control upon entering university. Four years later, they looked at the students’ grade point averages (GPA) and found that self-control was twice as important as IQ in earning a high GPA.

The self-control required to develop good habits (and stop bad ones) also serves as the foundation for a strong work ethic and high productivity. Self-control is like a muscle — to build it up you need to exercise it. Practice flexing your self-control muscle by breaking the following bad habits:

1. Using your phone, tablet or computer in bed. This is a big one that most people don’t even realize harms their sleep and productivity. Short-wavelength blue light plays an important role in your mood, energy level and sleep quality. In the morning, sunlight contains high concentrations of this blue light. When your eyes are exposed to it directly, the blue light halts production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin and makes you feel more alert. In the afternoon, the sun’s rays lose their blue light, which allows your body to produce melatonin and start making you sleepy. By the evening, your brain doesn’t expect any blue light exposure and is very sensitive to it.

Most of our favorite evening devices — laptops, tablets and mobile phones — emit short-wavelength blue light brightly and right in your face. This exposure impairs melatonin production and interferes with your ability to fall asleep as well as with the quality of your sleep once you do nod off. As we’ve all experienced, a poor night’s sleep has disastrous effects. The best thing you can do is to avoid these devices after dinner (television is OK for most people as long as they sit far enough away from the set).

2. Impulsively surfing the internet. It takes you 15 consecutive minutes of focus before you can fully engage in a task. Once you do, you fall into a euphoric state of increased productivity called flow. Research shows that people in a flow state are five times more productive than they otherwise would be. When you click out of your work because you get an itch to check the news, Facebook, a sport’s score or what have you, this pulls you out of flow. This means you have to go through another 15 minutes of continuous focus to reenter the flow state. Click in and out of your work enough times, and you can go through an entire day without experiencing flow.

3. Checking your phone during a conversation. Nothing turns people off like a mid-conversation text message or even a quick glance at your phone. When you commit to a conversation, focus all your energy on the conversation. You will find that conversations are more enjoyable and effective when you immerse yourself in them.

4. Using multiple notifications. Multiple notifications are a productivity nightmare. Studies have shown that hopping on your phone and e-mail every time they ping for your attention causes your productivity to plummet. Getting notified every time a message drops onto your phone or an e-mail arrives in your inbox might feel productive, but it isn’t. Instead of working at the whim of your notifications, pool all your e-mails/texts and check them at designated times (e.g., respond to your e-mails every hour). This is a proven, productive way to work.

5. Saying ‘yes’ when you should say ‘no’. Research conducted at the University of California in San Francisco shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout and even depression, all of which erode self-control. Saying no is indeed a major self-control challenge for many people. “No” is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it’s time to say no, emotionally intelligent people avoid phrases like “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them. Just remind yourself that saying no is an act of self-control now that will increase your future self-control by preventing the negative effects of over commitment.

6. Thinking about toxic people. There are always going to be toxic people who have a way of getting under your skin and staying there. Each time you find yourself thinking about a coworker or person who makes your blood boil, practice being grateful for someone else in your life instead. There are plenty of people out there who deserve your attention, and the last thing you want to do is think about the people who don’t matter when there are people who do.

7. Multitasking during meetings. You should never give anything half of your attention, especially meetings. If a meeting isn’t worth your full attention, then you shouldn’t be attending it in the first place; and if the meeting is worth your full attention, then you need to get everything you can out of it. Multitasking during meetings hurts you by creating the impression that you believe you are more important than everyone else.

8. Gossiping. Gossipers derive pleasure from other people’s misfortunes. It might be fun to peer into somebody else’s personal or professional faux pas at first, but over time, it gets tiring, makes you feel gross and hurts other people. There are too many positives out there and too much to learn from interesting people to waste your time talking about the misfortune of others.

9. Waiting to act until you know you’ll succeed. Most writers spend countless hours brainstorming their characters and plots, and they even write page after page that they know they’ll never include in the books. They do this because they know that ideas need time to develop. We tend to freeze up when it’s time to get started because we know that our ideas aren’t perfect and that what we produce might not be any good. But how can you ever produce something great if you don’t get started and give your ideas time to evolve? Author Jodi Picoult summarized the importance of avoiding perfectionism perfectly: “You can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page.”

10. Comparing yourself to other people. When you feel good about something that you’ve done, don’t allow anyone’s opinions or accomplishments take that away from you. While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what other people are thinking or doing, your self-worth comes from within. Regardless of what people think of you at any particular moment, one thing is certain — you’re never as good or bad as they say you are.

By practicing self-control to break these bad habits, you can simultaneously strengthen your self-control muscle and abolish nasty habits that have the power to bring your career to a grinding halt.